Banging harder on organ keys will not increase the volume of the sound the organ generates -- the organist selects the combination of sounds by pulling drawbars -- more on this below.

There is no sustain pedal as on a piano, which makes playing music smoothly much more difficult. Pianists who are unfamiliar with the organ really miss this. To compensate for this loss, organists gain the use of a pedalboard, a much larger version of a keyboard. To the beginning organist, though, this extra set of keys to worry about can be much more of a hindrance than a help.

The Sound: Pipe organs create sound through, well, pipes. The following pages are part of a larger organ revival site by Marya J. Fancey at the University of Florida, and offer excellent explanations of the different facets of the organ: